Rt. 280 & Rt 80

This tower is a true example of a "trial and error" strategy. I remember when this was TDMA only. It only had the long panels attached to directly to the monopole. Then, when GSM was installed, they added the thinner 1900Mhz panels attached directly to the monopole. If you look at the picture below, you can see the smaller thinner panels are below the large ones. Later on, AT&T decided to move the thinner panels ABOVE the large ones. Since the large panels were already at the top of the monopole, the thin 1900Mhz panels looked like they were hanging in the air for a while just above the bigger panels.

Soon after that, AT&T felt that more height was needed and that the TDMA/GSM combination on the same lower panels wasn't working right. So they added an extension to the monopole making it taller (picture above). Now, the double panels above handle GSM 850. The thinner panels are still in the same place for GSM 1900 and the larger ones below that for TDMA/AMPS 800.

Here's a look at this tower BEFORE the top section was added. Notice that the GSM 1900 panels were still below the larger TDMA panels.